


Athazagoraphobia

by Syntax



Series: Writings of Xarxes [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Lowercase, Memory Loss, crossposted from tumblr: thespleenoflorkhan, this was supposed to be a short textpost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 12:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17467172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: the human mind can only retain so many memories at once.  when it reaches its limit, it begins to erase old contents to make way for new.  how fortunate for miraak then, that his memory does not have such problems, and he can remember his four eras of imprisonment and the life he lead before them with perfect clarity.imagine if that were not the case.





	Athazagoraphobia

the human mind can only retain so many memories at once.  when it reaches its limit, it begins to erase old contents to make way for new.  how fortunate for miraak then, that his memory does not have such problems, and he can remember his four eras of imprisonment and the life he lead before them with perfect clarity.

imagine if that were not the case.

it’s a particularly nostalgic day when he realizes something’s wrong.  he’s remembering his time in the priesthood, before the woodland man found him, before his eyes were opened.  he was a fool then.  he is a fool now.  but that does not mean that there were not things he enjoyed about his old life.

there was a joke that had been told during a meeting between priests.  perhaps not a very funny joke, but it had derailed the meeting entirely and sent them all into fits of laughter.  they had to abstain and reschedule in order to continue without giggling.  he tried to remember what the joke was, and couldn’t.  that wasn’t particularly an issue.  you can’t really be expected to remember every joke you’ve ever heard in your life.

the issue was that he could not remember who had said the joke, or even who had been attending the meeting.

there were four—four?  no, there were  _five_  priests on solstheim counting himself.  he knew them.  he had worked with them for years.  but what were their names?  what were their faces?

there was vahlok, he knows, and zahkriisos, and…krosis?  no that doesn’t sound right—but is it?  hadn’t there been one from saar…something, from a village that had been sacked by elves?

he couldn’t remember.

hermaeus mora calls for his champion’s attention.  missing faces and missing moments will have to wait.  the prince of fate is remarkably impatient.

he doesn’t know how much later it is when he tries to see how far back his memory goes.  time in apocrypha is difficult to measure—it could have been hours.  it could have been decades.  when there is no sun to tell you the days, and no sense of hunger or exhaustion to tell you the hours, you lose yourself very quickly.

he starts with his earliest moments.  his mother and father.  he must have had them, but what were they like?  were they stern?  gentle?  were they kind to him and his…

did he even have siblings?

he couldn’t remember.

he couldn’t remember.

the feeling that wells up in him could probably be called panic.  where did he grow up?  who did he know?  how did he live?

he remembers the day he discovered his dragon heritage, he remembers absorbing a dragon’s soul in front of everyone, but he doesn’t remember why the dragon died to begin with or why he was there.  he remembers getting his robes, getting his training, getting his mask.

his mask.

he rips the hunk of metal from his head, taking the fabric hood along with it.  the air of apocrypha feels cold and wet against his bare skin.  had it always felt like this?

the blank eyes of his mask stare back at him, slanted and empty.  slanted?  weren’t they always horizontal?  he remembered his mask had been different from the others in recognition of his dragon soul.  was this one of the changes?  these tusks?  these horns?  had it always looked like this?  had—

the mask fell from his grasp.

he did not know what it was.  perhaps panic, or perhaps something more.  his hands trembled as they reached up to brush against his face, feel through leather-coated digits skin that had not been uncovered for years.

what.

what did he even look like?

he couldn’t remember.

he doesn’t know how long he stands there, staring down at his mask as his mask stares up at him, trying to remember what his own face looks like, trying to shake the feeling that that he’s already looking at it.

he doesn’t know.  he’s called away.  he picks the mask up off the ground and puts it back on.  it feels awkward against his skin now.

he doesn’t take it back off.

the next moment he has to himself, he decides that simply trying to remember by itself isn’t enough.  the world he resides in—the world he knows—is filled with books from all ages past, present, and future.  someone would’ve written about the age he hails from.  someone would’ve written about him.

he starts looking for information about the life he once knew.

there isn’t much.

he finds books of tithes and prayers written in the dragon language.  he finds sermons and speeches and architectural design for temples that seem familiar but probably aren’t.  he finds diaries.  letters.  none of it rings a bell.  but he does learn one thing.

it’s easy to remember what happens in a story, because you can look back on an older page and see where you’ve been.  when your story has been stricken from the records, you’ll have to write it down yourself if you want to know how it goes.

so he does.

there are countless quills in apocrypha.  sticks of ink and charcoal.  sheets upon sheets of parchment.  he writes in them at first, wanting as much space as possible to recount what he recalls.

there’s a funny thing about paper.  when it’s not bound with anything heavy enough to hold it down, it tends to fly away in the wind.  kruziikrel offers him a thousand pardons. he offers nothing in return.  a hard lesson learned is a harsher lesson spared.

he scrawls his story instead into so many of the books, enough that he can never lose himself if he loses them.  he claims all the charcoal he can find, grinds ink against his sword in lieu of a stone, tears off his gloves and slices open foreign fingers when nothing else is available to him.

he writes his lifeline into the books.  my name is miraak, they read.  i am trapped here by the will of hermaeus mora.  i will escape this place one day.

he writes what he remembers.

it’s less and less each day.

it will have to be enough.

hermaeus mora calls him.  the prince of fate is remarkably impatient.

he does his duty.  writes what he can.  reads what he can. wonders how much is real and how much is imagined.  records his days until it’s a habit he can’t remember the reasoning for.

he finds things.

maps and diagrams and tables stained with blood.  letters.  a written recount of the world’s funniest joke.  census data in a strange script.  memoirs.  pictures.  the history of an old settlement off the coast of skyrim.

he does not know what era they come from.  he does not know what era he is in.  time has no meaning in apocrypha, his only marker of its passing is his master calling him away.

he finds people, sometimes.

lost souls terrified of the seekers they will one day become.  there’s not much he can do for them, although they all beg him to try.  they panic, eventually.  forget themselves.  try to make some lasting impact on the realm before they fade away.  he finds their notes sometimes.  my name is asterax.  calliope.  bjornson.  my name is stands-with-a-fist.

i will escape.

i will escape.

i will escape.

he finds books strewn about with their pages wide open, hastily written words all over the covers and the margins.  some are written in charcoal.  some are written in ink.  some of them seem to be a mix of the two, and some seem to have a mix of blood as well.  my name is miraak, they read.  i am trapped here by the will of hermaeus mora.  i will escape this place one day.

he wonders how long they’ve been there.

he wonders if miraak has forgotten himself yet.

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be like 300 words tops and then i realized i could fic it to make the idea i was trying to convey more painful


End file.
